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Movie Trailers

I need a little break from the SSRLP I mentioned to you yesterday, so here I am, getting in a second blog post this week.

If you like horror movies, you need to subscribe to Al Bruno III’s blog. He’s a creative writer, for one. For another, the guy finds some very cool trailers and I can’t wait to see some of the movies. Good horror movies, as you know if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, are hard to come by. They’re few and far between. While the job of a trailer is to make the movie look good no matter how bad it is, some of these trailers I’ve been seeing on Al’s site are absolutely amazing. If the movie can deliver on what the trailer promises, they’re going to be a lot of fun to see.

Problem is, I don’t go to theaters. Even if I did, I don’t know if these sorts of movies play at just any theater. They seem sort of counter-culture in genre and tone. While I’m sure some of them will make popular rounds, not finding them at the local multiplex sometimes means it’s going to be a bear to find them on cable, too.

That’s a shame. With some of the tripe I’ve seen on cable passing as “horror” movies, complete with Muppet monsters and high school theater actors, getting good movies into the cable array of garbage would be a boon. And hanging onto them around Halloween makes sense to me from a marketing perspective, but then, I never studied marketing.

So I’m interested to find out whether I’ll see any of the cool movies Al’s posting about. There are sites dedicated to finding these apparent gems, and Al’s a guru at finding those sites and sharing the goods. But actually getting the goods once the road map is open is another matter altogether.

How about you? Do you find yourself unable to see movies you thought you’d enjoy for availability? I’m sure this is a non-issue for people who can spare the chump change for something like NetFlix or Blockbuster’s online service. But for po’ folks like me, the pickin’s get might slim.

Where do you go for your entertainment fixes? Do you have a secret storehouse you like? Or are you a traditionalist going through mainstream outlets?

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12 thoughts on “Movie Trailers”

For me anyway I am more likely to see an strange film via home video than I am in the theaters. A lot of creative horror films just don ‘t get wide release a lot of the time- to be truthful I’m not sure if it is a matter of the suits thinking some of these things won’t play well in the flyover states or is it just that they WON’T play well in the flyover states.

Hm. I live in a fly-over state. Maybe that’s the problem?

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN was one of the best horror films ever but I am not sure how a subtitled horror flick would have done in wide release. Now they are remaking it and I have a sneaking suspicion they will construct it as a standard horror film with the standard horror film ‘beats’.

Well, I don’t know; some of the Japanese horror films which got remade (or Korean, for that matter) turned out all right. I think there’s always something lost in translation though. And different cast and director means different “interpretations” of the same thing … for some reason.

Horror films sometimes work best as a subversive underground thing, a perfect example would be John Carpenter’s THE THING. When it as first released geeks and reviewers alike had nothing nice to say about it. Now a lifetime later it is seen as a classic.

See, I disagree. Where I grew up critics hated The Thing, but viewers LOVED it. It was a hit.

Another good example is LEMORA: A CHILD’S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. I bet none of you have heard of but is a great bit of dark fantasy that I doubt I would ever have seen if not for the Internets and DVD.

I prefer to watch movies on BD/DVD because I can pause and rewind and subtitle whenever I feel like it. Also, I can take bathroom breaks. I can eat pretty much any food I want. I can eat them properly with utensils. I can sit on a comfortable couch or I can lie down on the couch. My floor is nowhere near as sticky as the floor of a movie theatre. In my house, there’s only 2 people I have to tell to “Shut the hell up” during the movie as opposed to a theatre full of assholes who won’t shut up. At my house, I can sit wherever I want instead of hoping to get a good seat not taken up by some butthole’s jacket.

My sentiments exactly.

As for where I get the movies, I don’t rent, I buy. Does that mean I spend too much money. Sometimes, usually, I’ll watch the movie many times over and watch all the special features and what-not. It’s rare that I buy a movie that turns out to suck. (No Country For Old Men is 30 bucks I ain’t ever gonna see again.) I used to do all my movie shopping at this little specialty store that had a great selection of old and rare and foreign films. But they closed down. So now, Best Buy because it’s convenient.

But if I was you, I would just use bit torrents and download everything. Sure, it’s wrong, but it’s cheap. And it’s less harmful to society than going to the Asian mall and buying bootlegs DVDs from the Triads. (Well, that’s who sells the bootleg DVDs in Toronto. I don’t know who’s got the market in your town. Is the mafia still big over there?

I hadn’t even THOUGHT of bit torrent streams, to be honest. Not a bad suggestion! 🙂

And I saw a commercial for a horror movie recently and the commercial actually made this movie look good. Don’t remember what it was called but I remember thinking that it was a poor choice for title. Seems to be a movie about a small town being terrorized by monsters or zombies or something supernatural. At first, the commercial made it seem something like The Midwich Cuckoos, but then the zombies came out. That made me less interested. But the commercial did grab my attention, so at least you could say it’s a good commercial.

That’s how I feel too. 🙂

Then there’s that other horror movie coming out with ads everywhere. The Legion seems to just be The Terminator with demons instead of robots. Someone is sent to Earth to save a woman who will eventually give birth to humanity’s savior.

Yeah, not an uncommon theme. It’s nice to know there’s so many fresh ideas out there, huh? 🙂

I tried to download an episode of True Blood using utorrent and it crashed my computer. I mean, haul-me-to-the-Dumpster crash. I’d be careful. I obviously didn’t know what I was doing and my computer protection software didn’t tell me until it was too late.

No ‘entertainment’ outlet here. I do subscribe to Netflix, but rarely use it. Mostly I spend all my time working and while at work, looking for stuff to put on the old blog. Didn’t see your Friday Fiction this week. Did you put something there?

No, I sure didn’t Steve, but it’s nice to know you’re following and eager. I’m sorry, but after the last couple of go-’rounds with people over my work (which I don’t really get, since other flash authors didn’t get beat up, just me), my wife suggests waiting for a while before doing it again. If you want to read something I’ve written, though, go through my contact page on my fiction blog or here and let me know. I’ll send you something — unedited for the moment, so be aware of that — which almost no one has seen. Deal?

We mostly watch cable and there is one major theater chain here in the Wichita area but if I want to see something in IMAX like Avatar, then we have to watch it up in KC, MO when we visit my daughter. Like WIGSF we tend to buy movies when they are on sale and usually what we are pretty sure about ( ie Star Trek) or our son buys some and we trade off so we don’t buy the same movies and no one is stuck with buying the most movies. Our Daughter has Netflix and loves it and we are thinking about it since the weather looks like it is just going to get worse as winter progresses and it’s not worth the 32 mile/one way trip to go to the movie theater.

Getting grumpy about stuff like that in my old age. 🙂

Amen! I am SOOO not interested in any of the crap I’d have to deal with in a theater. 🙂

Like I said before, babe, that’s the new official moniker for this baby. 🙂

I see all my movies through Netflix. We probably go to the theater once a year with the kids. Netflix actually has a lot of indies, and I like how I can stream them on the laptop. Don’t know about horror specifically.

I know they rock, but I can’t afford it. Not right now at least. But it’s nice to know you’re liking it. 🙂

I’m an avid horror, scifi, mystery, thriller, chick-flick, you name it, movie buff. I start watching anything I haven’t seen before — I will not finish watching if the movie doesn’t hold my interest, $$$ or not. Rarely I fork over $4.99 for a Pay-per-view, depends on the hype, whether or not I’ve “read the book,” etc. The last Pay-per view I paid to watch was “Grand Torino” and that’s only because I still like to watch Clint! Mostly I wait for the movie to show up on TNT. Over the holiday, I rented “Cloverfield” because It never showed up on any networks . . . now I know why. It was remarkably bad and I also didn’t like “Inglorious Bastards!”

I don’t know if I’ll bother with Ingloreous Basterds or whatever it’s misspelled name is. But I had to laugh, right out loud. You and I are diametrically opposed on Cloverfield vs. Quarantine. I HATED Quarantine; one of the worst movies I’ve EVER seen. LOL!

I think WIGSF is right about the trailer for “Legions.” Saw it last night and wrote down the title. Good Horror is my absolute favorite! Haven’t seen a really good one that made my hair stand on end since “The Ring,” but “Quarentine” had its moments . . . I just hate that it was one of those jittery camera movies — like “Cloverfield!”

I subscribe to the Canadian version of NetFlix, but I still don’t necessarily see the movies I want to see when I want to see them, due to availability. I don’t want to see the more popular films, but the more obscure ones have fewer DVD’s in circulation, so the chances of a copy being in when one of my discs in up for an exchange is slim. Oh well. I’m not keen enough on films to care a whole lot. I’ll take what I can get and be satisfied. So far I’m subsisting on TV series on DVD instead of movies. That’s cool.

They can be yeah. How ’bout Deadwood, or Dexter, or some of the cable series? Interested in those at all?

Hmmm…our local library actually lets you borrow DVD’s but it is an eclectic list – not sure if they have many horror films. We also know a few folks that love to buy/collect movies so we borrow from them sometimes. Our oldest son used to work part-time at the movie theatres so we could go for free. On some of the more popular movies they would have midnight viewings for employees and friends/family the night before they opened. I almost forgot – Redbox is really popular around here too. If we do go to the movie theatre we usually go to the cheaper matinee shows or buy discounted tickets through the grocery store.

We get a lot of ours from the library too. But the selection’s … well, let’s just say it’s limited. It’s a small town and a small library, so … y’know.

I won’t watch horror, you know, so I can’t speak to that. There are movies I want to see, but I just don’t see them. Sometimes I get Netflix. Sometimes I buy something. Once in a blue moon I go to the theater. I like movies. I love the occasional movie. But I’m no movie buff. And I hate being told what movie to see. Picky, picky, picky. Well, sort of. If I bother to see a movie I’m bound to like it because I only watch movies I’m really sure I’m going to like. Friends can tell me a thousand times over how great a movie is, but I don’t really care.

Recently I did watch Gray Gardens at my sister-in-law’s. Loved it. But I’d wanted to see it for a long time.

And my dad gave my husband the new Star Trek dvd. Love that too.

But good luck finding a good horror movie. You watch them so I don’t have to!

Going to a theatre for me is a big event because I live 30 miles one way from the closest one. When I lived in Cody, I went to about 1 movie a week, but now I have to make a special trip over on my day off and it just isn’t worth it.

Long treks to pay for the privilege of hearing people talk over the movie and letting their cell phones ring and sitting in sticky chairs just ain’t worth it to me.

My biggest interest (other than reading) is TV on DVD. I have quite a library of seasons worth of shows and I have a Netflix subscription so I can watch before I decide to buy. I do movies on Netflix as well, but they are older movies. I get new releases from Redbox…$1 for 24 hours.

During the winter a person needs entertainment options or they will go craaazy!